+ New Adventure Book By Gary Paulsen!

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A teacher in Texas says, “If I have a kid who’s a reluctant reader, all I have to do is hand him one of Gary Paulsen’s books.  It’ll change his life.”

The prolific Newbery Award-winning writer of adventure books for kids  writes a fresh book every few months.  Due out within weeks is  The Legend of Bass Reeves (Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House). 

The book is identified on the cover as the “true and fictional account” of a real slave who became the most successful federal marshal in American history. Says Paulsen, in an article in the NY Times, Reeves would “ride alone into the center of hell and bring the men out, alive, if possible… He did this 3,000 times.  Miraculously, he was never wounded.  He rejected countless bribes, and when his own son killed his wife he tracked his son down and sent him to prison for life.”

As he does with all his books, Paulsen gives his hero some of his own experiences and adventures, as well as some of his traits.  Paulsen, an outdoorsman who owns a spread in Alaska, trains sled dogs there.  He has done the daunting Iditarod race.  His marvelous book, Hatchet, is about a kid who is the sole survivor of a wilderness plane crash in our northernmost state.

Looking, at 67, something like Ernest Hemingway, Paulsen shuns life in towns, and also owns a ranch in the Jicarilla mountains of New Mexico.  He is given to curmudgeonly statements about the modern world (television is “intellectual carbon monoxide”).  He grew up poor and lonely in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, the son of alcoholic parents.  He became a street kid.  “School didn’t work for me.  I hated it.” 

He was 13 when he walked into a Minnesota library one evening, just because it looked warm inside.  “The librarian typed my name on a card.  I looked at it and somehow that made me somebody.”  He became a voracious reader.

Paulsen has written over 175 books, according to his website www.garypaulsen.com .  He adapted one of them, Nightjohn, about a slave who risks his life to teach others to read, for a 1996 TV movie.  A story of an orphan in Juarez, Mexico, called The Crossing,  is currently in film preproduction.

“I’m a teller of stories.  I put bloody skins on my back and dance around the fire, and I say what the hunt was like.  It’s not erudite, it’s not intellectual.  I sail, I run dogs, ride horses… and tell stories about the stuff I’ve been through.  And I’m still a romantic.  I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.”

He says he stopped writing for adults 10 years ago because adults are trapped in car payments, work and divorces, and don’t have time to “think fresh”.

“Name the book that made the biggest impression on you.  I bet you read it before you hit puberty.  In the time I’ve got left, I intend to write artistic books — for kids — because they’re still open to new ideas.”

Margaret Tice, a member of the Newbery committee, which has been awarded to Paulsen three times, also coordinates children’s services at the New York Public Library.  “Gary Paulsen’s writing is very authentic, and kids sense that… He’s always lived his life on the edge and survived true adventures, but he’s not just an action man; he also knows how young people feel and think”

[the sole source for this post is an article in the New York Times by Anne Goodwin Sides, 8/26/06]  

tutoring in Columbus OH:   Adrienne Edwards   614-579-6021   or         aedwardstutor@columbus.rr.com